Death of a Dormouse

by Reginald Hill

  The final picture caught her in a quite different mood. She was glowing with joy, her head tipped back, her mouth opened wide in laughter. The print had been cut and probably enlarged so that background details were vague, but she knew where and when it had been taken. Her last lunch-time drink with James Dacre.

  She flipped over the page. There was just one more sheet. It consisted of a photocopy of two sets of fingerprints, left hand and right hand.

  Beneath them was her name.

  Carefully she closed the file and replaced it as she had found it. But the futility of that act was already clear to her. The file had been left here for her to examine. Perhaps they were somehow watching her examining it while they examined her for her reaction. What should it be? Anger? Fear? Bewilderment?

  The door opened. Fräulein Weigel said, ‘In here, if you please.’

  Obediently she went through into a brightly lit room which had a medical smell about it, an impression reinforced by the presence of a small, middle-aged woman wearing a white overall. There was a further door opposite the one she had entered. By this stood another woman, broad-shouldered, slab-faced, like an Eastern European shot-putter. Or a concentration camp guard.

  There was no furniture at all in this room.

  ‘Please turn and face the wall. Lean against it with your hands as far apart as they will go, your legs spread wide,’ said Fräulein Weigel.

  ‘No!’ cried Trudi. ‘What is this? Please, where’s Jünger? I demand to see Jünger!’

  ‘Shortly,’ said the girl. ‘Please, Frau Adamson. It is merely procedure. It is necessary to search you. Everyone who comes here must be searched.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Trudi fearfully.

  ‘It is easier with your cooperation,’ said the girl, glancing towards the burly woman at the door.

  Now was the time to resist, to scream, to flee.

  Only the conviction that this was all part of a deliberately debilitating plan kept Trudi from hysterics.

  She turned to the wall and leaned against it as she had seen suspects do in American thrillers. What happened next confirmed the memory. Her feet were kicked further apart till she was completely off balance. Hands ran through her clothes, over her body, checking every bump, every unevenness. Next some kind of electronic detector was moved in a slow zig-zag up and down her frame. Finally, just as she thought it was over, she suddenly felt her wrists seized in a grip like a clamp and to her unutterable horror her pants were pulled down over her buttocks and a hand slipped between her thighs and entered her.

  She screamed in pain, in outrage, in sheer amazement. It was all over in a couple of seconds, but she carried on screaming. Then she realized the grip on her wrists had been removed. Drunkenly she staggered away from the wall, pulled her pants up, and turned around.

  The burly woman was standing a couple of feet away, regarding her indifferently. The white-overalled woman was moving away peeling off a surgical glove. Fräulein Weigel, serious as ever, said, ‘This way please,’ and walked briskly to the further door and opened it. Trudi followed with unsteady steps. As she passed the woman in white, she paused and swung an open-handed blow at her face with all her might.

  Her forearm was caught before the slap could connect. The burly woman held it, one-handed, with ease. The woman in white didn’t even look at her.

  Sobbing, Trudi pulled away and went after the girl through the door into the corridor. That part of her mind which she had begun to value as herself, independent, rational, captain of her fate, mistress of her soul, was screaming at her that beyond these walls, within a few metres, lay Vienna, a free city in a democratic state, a city she knew well, had lived in for many years, which contained people she knew, which contained a British consulate and James Dacre.

  But this screamed reassurance came from a vast distance, from some perilous ledge to which herself had retreated and to which herself was clinging with most precarious hold.

  They were climbing stairs now, endless, mean little flights which turned back on themselves every twelve treads. Once she looked down into the narrow well. It was dark and receding apparently into infinity, except that somewhere in the gloom she thought she glimpsed a pallid face peering up at her. After that she looked no more but concentrated on following Fräulein Weigel. There was a moment on each flight when the girl had turned up the next and was no longer in view ahead. Trudi felt a crescendoing panic that at each turn, her guide would have disappeared or, worse, been substituted by she didn’t let herself think what, except that images of Trent kept on stealing into her mind.

  At last it happened. The girl had gone. Trudi gasped aloud in fear and louder still as a voice behind her said, ‘This way.’

  She turned. They had reached a long landing and she had simply been looking the wrong way. Behind her stood Fräulein Weigel and she was holding open another door through which, miraculously, fell a shaft of mote-filled sunlight.

  Slowly Trudi approached the threshold and halted, feeling as Dante must have felt when he beheld the stars again.

  It was a fine, airy, elegantly proportioned room with delicate ceiling mouldings picked out in gold and burgundy, a marble fireplace in which glowed a wood-log fire and, best of all, three high windows which gave a view across a tumble of rooftops to the familiar outline of Steffl, the great South Tower of St Stephen’s cathedral. The morning sun was still low in the sky. Trudi stood in its thin rays and felt them like a benison.

  ‘It is a nice view, isn’t it?’

  Startled, she turned to see the owner of the voice. Only now did she realize that she had entered the room and walked straight across it to stand in the window.

  Jünger was standing by the fireplace, evidently having just risen from one of a pair of bergères in the high rococo style which stood in front of it.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry …’ began Trudi, instinctively starting to apologize for her rudeness in ignoring him; then memory of what she’d been through came rushing in.

  ‘I want out of here, Herr Jünger,’ she shouted. ‘I don’t know or care who you are, I’m bringing charges, even if I’ve got to go to the European Court to make them stick!’

  His face filled with bewildered concern.

  ‘Please, Frau Adamson, what is the matter?’

  She told him, using words she once would not have used, even to Trent. He said, ‘Excuse me,’ and left the room.

  She sat in one of the chairs and warmed herself at the fire. She had not realized she was so cold, even to the point of shivering.

  The door opened. It wasn’t Jünger, but a boy in a white shirt and black trousers with a red stripe. He was carrying a tray with coffeepot, cups, cream, sugar and a plate artistically laden with torten.

  He moved a small table between the two chairs, placed the tray on it, bowed and smiled in response to Trudi’s thank you, and left.

  After a while Trudi poured herself a coffee. It was excellent and her tattered nerves repaired enough for her to remark that the bergères were apparently genuine mid-eighteenth century and to resist the temptation of the torten. She was drinking her second cup when Jünger returned, his face creased with concern.

  ‘You’re having coffee. Excellent. A cake to go with it? Or some brandy perhaps? No? Frau Adamson, I am devastated. It has been a ghastly error. The instruction was to process you; it is a necessary procedure for all visitors, however high, nothing more than a simple identity check and an electronic scan, then you are given a security label. Look, I have yours here.’

  He handed over a plastic-covered lapel badge which contained her photograph and a deal of small print. She let it lie on the table.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ he continued, ‘owing to some administrative idiocy, Fräulein Weigel had you classified as an interrogatee. I am so sorry.’

  ‘And that’s it?’ cried Trudi. ‘Listen, Herr Jünger, visitor or interrogatee, I’d still be outraged! I don’t believe it can be legal to do that to anyone.’

  Jünger shrugged and said, ‘T
here are people out there who would stop at nothing to get bugs or even bombs into this building. Our procedures are necessary, believe me. But I will see that those responsible for this mishap are disciplined.’

  ‘Starting with Weigel, I hope. I got the impression she got rather too much enjoyment from her work.’

  ‘Fräulein Weigel? Perhaps. Not without reason. But I have spoken severely to her already and will do so again. Now I hope we can put this unhappy start behind us.’

  Trudi shook her head. Herself was off the ledge and rapidly returning to the centre of things.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said firmly. ‘Weigel had a file. There were details of my life in it. Photographs I didn’t know had been taken. And fingerprints. That’s how you knew I’d been at Astrid’s, you said. Fingerprints. What I want to know is what does it all mean? Why should this office of yours have a file on me, like a criminal?’

  ‘No,’ said Jünger. ‘Not like a criminal. Like a citizen who has come near crime and needs protection.’

  ‘Protection? Who from? And on whose authority?’ demanded Trudi.

  ‘Authority? My authority, I suppose. But better to ask, at whose request.’

  ‘All right then,’ said Trudi. ‘If you must play games. At whose request?’

  ‘At your husband’s, Frau Adamson. At Trent’s. You see, he was working for me, I mean for the department, when he died. It was at his request that we opened a surveillance file on you.’

  Trudi sat very still. The heat seemed to have gone out of the fire.

  She said, ‘That brandy you offered me, I think I’d like it now.’

  4

  ‘In 1945 at the end of the war, Vienna was in ruins, physically, administratively, morally. The Allies were trying to restore some kind of order, but they were constantly diverted by squabbling after their own interests in competition with each other. The only truly efficient organization in the city was that which feeds on war rather than suffers under it – crime. There was a huge and complex black market system. Food, petrol, medical supplies …’

  ‘I saw The Third Man,’ said Trudi, recalling James’s remark.

  Jünger laughed humourlessly. ‘Yes. A nice entertainment. But this was far from entertaining. Men died. Others made fortunes. As civic order was restored, so these men had to seek solid cover for their activities. Opportunism is the criminal virtue of chaos; organization of order. The black market bosses developed their own specialisms. If you decided to concentrate on protection, you got yourself a union; on gambling, a night-club; on prostitution, an employment agency. And if you decided to stay closer to the old black market and expand into a large-scale international smuggling operation, you looked for something which would offer you fluidity of movement, familiarity with frontier officialdom, up-to-date information on cross-border movement, legitimate reason for flight and ship charters, established contact points in major cities …’

  He paused invitingly.

  ‘Schiller-Reise,’ said Trudi dully.

  ‘That’s right. You get yourself a travel agency. A good, efficient, respected and prospering travel agency. After that, all things are possible. It is our belief, our certainty, that Schiller-Reise has for many years been the legitimate cover for a highly sophisticated smuggling operation.’

  ‘What makes you so certain?’ asked Trudi, anticipating the answer.

  ‘Your husband, Frau Adamson. He was our inside man, our star witness. No, not in any professional sense, he was just a good citizen who, when his suspicions were roused, very properly went to the authorities. We listened, checked where we could, found what he said fitted with much of our own information. And then …’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘We asked him to help us. What he had given us was enough to snip off a few important shoots, that was true. But we wanted the whole tree, roots and all. So we asked him to keep watching and reporting. He agreed.’

  Trudi finished her brandy. Jünger refilled the glass without needing to be asked.

  ‘Herr Jünger,’ she said. ‘Has all this got anything to do with my husband’s death?’

  Before he answered, he poured himself a glass and sipped it appreciatively.

  ‘Shall I be honest? I do not know, but naturally I had suspicions. The English police, however, could find nothing that was not consistent with accident. The fire worried me, however. It is not as easy as it appears in American films for a car to set on fire. Every day there are numerous accidents often resulting in the total write-off of automobiles, yet how often do they go up in flames? The car was re-examined by incendiary experts.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘That they could see how a device might have been used, but if it were, then it was made out of such inflammable materials as are used in normal car construction and was therefore itself consumed undetectably by the flames.’

  Jünger spoke gloomily. He wants Trent to have been murdered! thought Trudi.

  She said, ‘Why did my husband leave Schiller-Reise and return to England? He must have told you, surely?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Jünger. ‘He told us he had been posted to the UK to take over Schiller-Reise’s operations there. He said nothing about having resigned from the company. I read the reports of the statements you made to the police after his death. It seems you knew nothing of this either?’

  ‘Nothing at all, not until the funeral when Astrid Fischer told me that I needn’t expect any pension,’ she said with bitter recollection. ‘Why should Trent have lied to us both?’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t,’ said Jünger.

  ‘You mean, perhaps he didn’t resign from Schiller?’ said Trudi incredulously. ‘But how could they get away with saying he did? My lawyer made enquiries about pensions, insurance …’

  ‘And was doubtless shown a letter of resignation. I have seen it too. It looks genuine.’

  ‘Looks? But why shouldn’t it be? Why would the firm do something like that? To save on a widow’s pension? I can’t believe it!’

  Her mind was racing. She drank more brandy. It was like increasing the octane rating of fuel for a high-powered machine.

  ‘And what about the records of his new appointment? They’d have to be destroyed also. But what if there wasn’t really any new appointment, they just wanted him away from Vienna, somewhere where he could be got rid of and they could then produce the records which showed he’d resigned and had nothing more to do with them!’

  ‘Who are they, Frau Adamson?’

  ‘I don’t know. Whoever it is at Schiller-Reise who is running this smuggling racket. They found out that Trent was working for you. Perhaps they thought that by getting him out of the country, they’d get him away from your investigations. Perhaps …’

  She paused as another thought entered.

  ‘Astrid. Astrid would know that she was lying to me. Astrid had been sent to lie to me. Astrid had been sent to make contact with Trent … Astrid was with him shortly before the accident!’

  ‘What’s that you say, Frau Adamson?’ said Jünger, sitting up straight.

  Trudi explained about Mrs Brightshaw.

  ‘But you said nothing of this!’ he said accusingly.

  ‘Who should I say it to, unless the compensation case came to court? But I said it to Astrid! That’s why I went to see her, Herr Jünger. Not an old friend paying a surprise visit, but a jealous wife come to seek satisfaction!’

  Jünger massaged his jowls and said, ‘Yet you stayed to eat a meal, drink a lot of wine.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Trudi defiantly. ‘Women can be civilized, in fact it’s probably easier for us than men. Besides, it’s one thing quarrelling over a live man but it seems a waste of time quarrelling over a corpse.’

  She stopped, shocked at her own vehemence. She found herself glaring at Jünger as if defying him to look amused. It was unnecessary. His face was deadly serious.

  ‘So. Astrid Fischer. Here, at last, is what it is all about, your visit here, I mean. You say you left
her full of wine, happy, content?’

  ‘Oh yes. We’d had a lot of laughs.’

  ‘So certainly not in a state in which her old need might suddenly grow active again. And besides, why should she have heroin available? Unless of course she was more deeply implicated … a courier perhaps … but her ski-ing holiday would not take her out of the country. Though it would be a good opportunity to meet a contact from abroad, of course.’

  He was speaking half to himself.

  Trudi said, ‘I’m being very stupid. This smuggling racket is concerned with drugs?’

  ‘It’s concerned with large profits, Frau Adamson,’ he said, looking at her curiously. ‘There was a time when butter could bring you as much profit as heroin in central Europe, but those days have gone. Sometimes they seem almost like the good old days now! Strange, isn’t it? But to answer your question, yes, of course it is a drugs operation. That’s where the huge profits lie. Though with them come peculiar dangers, and not just from the law.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Trudi.

  ‘The natural growth of big business is towards monopolies,’ said Jünger. ‘Monopolies control production and prices. They are good for businessmen, bad for consumers. Therefore civilized countries inhibit them by law. But for those who work outside the law there is no control, except fear and strength. But to get back to our business. There is a chance that perhaps Fischer overdosed by accident. I do not believe so. She was shut up, I believe. And why? Because she talked to you perhaps.’

  ‘More reason to shut me up, surely,’ said Trudi reasonably. She hoped Jünger would deny it.

  ‘Yes, I see that,’ he said, frowning. ‘There is much I don’t understand. But to our business, Frau Adamson. There is work to do.’

  They spent the next hour going over Trudi’s account of the evening and her conversation with Astrid. The interrogation broadened to include Trudi’s life with Trent and her contact with other employees of Schiller-Reise. She realized how very little she knew about them. She recognized a few names and she could recall a couple of faces, but putting names and faces together was quite beyond her. She sensed Jünger’s growing exasperation. He had set a tape recorder running and at one point he stabbed his finger on the pause button and said, ‘Frau Adamson, please! You are a lively and intelligent woman, that I can see. Are you telling me that you had no interest in your husband’s job or his colleagues? That you managed to live in Vienna for three years and never become involved socially with any of them or their families?’